Custom Built for $650-$700

My friend wants to build himself a computer but he has a budget of about $700. He basically wants to build a computer for gaming but when I try to look I just end up going over the budget limit he has...can anyone help us with this and try to build a gaming PC for that price?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I'll give it a shot. <3

pretty Newegg list here.

I'm assuming that you don't need a monitor or a copy of Windows XP. To be honest, I don't really think that you can build a good gaming system for $700 and have enough leftover for a decent display, unless of course your tastes run towards Spider Solitaire. ^^ This price also doesn't include input devices and speakers, though you can probably recycle those from your friend's old system. If you need to cut costs, you could always buy a smaller hard drive (I prefer Hitachi drives, though you should be fine with anything but Maxtor) or drop the DVD burner for a standard CD burner.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Is he able to reuse any hardware? A Monitor, Keyboard, or Mouse, for instance?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yeah...his old monitor, keyboard and mouse are fine...just trying to build a faster PC for him to game on

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I don't have time to compile an actual list here (Currently at work), but here's what I reccomend:

Video Card: For gaming, this is key. $300 is a sweet point in terms of great performance without totally breaking the bank. I'd go there. 7900GT.

Motherboard: NForce4, Abit, Asus, or MSI. I'd avoid the DFI boards - I've dealt with 4 of them, and 3 were DOA. Make sure it has onboard LAN and sound to save money for the moment (can always upgrade later).

Processor: Basic Socket 939. 3000+ if they still make it, 3200+ if they don't. Get a decent Heatsink later and OC it.

RAM: 1GB Corsair PC3200 DDRAM. You don't need anything more, and the stuff performs great. Stick to a Gig for now, add another gig later.

Case: Cheap, simple.
PSU: 420-450W Thermaltake. $40-50.

Hard Drive, DVD-RW: Get something cheap for the present. All DVD-RW short of plextor (which rapes you with prices) are essentially the same; lightscribe is overrated. Hard Drives - get a 160GB sice they're only a few more bucks than the 80GBs and live with it until you can afford to add another.

When building on a budget, the key is make sacrifices now, upgrade later.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by Arainach

Video Card: For gaming, this is key. $300 is a sweet point in terms of great performance without totally breaking the bank. I'd go there. 7900GT.

Motherboard: NForce4, Abit, Asus, or MSI. I'd avoid the DFI boards - I've dealt with 4 of them, and 3 were DOA. Make sure it has onboard LAN and sound to save money for the moment (can always upgrade later).

I don't really think that he can afford a 7900GT unless he uses a Celeron or Sempron (which defeats the purpose of buying a good video card) or cuts corners badly on parts quality. The 7600GT is over $100 cheaper and it's hardly slow.

I'll agree on DFI boards being junky, though. And why do their Socket 939 boards demand 500+ watt power supplies, anyways? Abit and MSI are good board makers, though I don't think that you should ignore EPoX and Gigabyte, especially since they tend to be fairly cheap.

Contra what I said before, cheap Asus boards are either kinda junky or expensive. Their higher-end stuff ain't bad, though.

Cutting back to a 160GB hard drive's not a bad way to save $20 or so, just make sure that your friend doesn't need the extra space. The three best 160GB hard drives (the fast Hitachi, the balanced Western Digital, and the quiet and reliable Samsung) are also the three cheapest 160GB hard drives, so there's really no reason to buy the outdated Maxtor DiamondMax 10 or the slow and tempermental Seagate 7200.9 IMHO.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

what about Intel...it seems to me AMD has been alot more cheaper but if i wanna get a good video card wouldn't i need a motherboard with PCI 16x Express...and I think its the intel motherboards that holds slots like that.

FELIPE NO

PCIe is availablle for either platform. And I'll second the call to get a cheaper videocard (7600GT) in order to put that money toward good parts.

You want 1GB of cheap DDR400 (3200) RAM. You want an nForce 4 or MCP410/430 motherboard. And a 3000+ or 3200+ Athlon 64. A thermaltake power supply. Add a hard disk, cheap optical drive, and you are good to go for an AMD machine.

For an Intel based machine you might consider getting a Pentium D 805 instead. It's really cheap, and is dual core (good multitasking). The AMD based machine will likely be faster without overclocking, but it's another option.

How ya doing, buddy?

i agree that a 7900GT is out of the question at that price range- a 7600 would do just fine.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

With some fiddling, I managed to build a system that has both an Athlon 64 3000+ and a GeForce 7900GT.

Some of the sacrifices you'd have to make to get the video card in while remaining close to $700 shipped should be apparent. It has a smaller 80GB hard drive, OEM CD burner instead of retail DVD burner. Some of the other issues would only be obvious to someone with at least some experience in the trade...I have a hard time trusting an ECS/PC Chips motherboard, even if they have been improving their parts as of late, and the RAM, case, and power supply aren't of the same caliber the first system I posted. Basically, you'd probably have to sacrifice noise and long-term reliability to get some extra performance, and I think that you'd be happier if you spent the $100 bucks on better quality parts instead of absolute performance. That said, if you could stretch to a better case, a Gigabyte nForce 4 motherboard, and maybe better RAM ($30, maybe $40 more) and you don't mind sacrificing the DVD burner and big hard drive, you could probably do OK with a 7900GT and an Athlon 64.

That said, I didn't exactly spend a lot of time planning the 7900GT system out, so maybe you can do better.

How ya doing, buddy?